I don't think so. It looks pricey. However, it's a different approach to TV consumption. In the US, Comcast reports that the technology has stemmed cord cutting by its customers and the company is predicting 2017 will show net subscriber growth for the first time in 5 years.

What you should do is test out Shaw's FreeRange TV. It is free and uses the same technology as BlueSky. You use it to bring Shaw TV programming to your mobile devices, e.g. laptop, phone. However, I only wanted to watch CNN on my Chromebook. Turns out Shaw has no license to stream CNN so you will find FreeRange is missing some of the channels to which you subscribe.

Looks like Shaw has been able to secure a CNN streaming licence. I was able to watch CNN recently on FreeRange.

But you still need Shaw Internet, no?

Again, typical "walled garden" approach to Shaw - instead of offering limited guest access to all Shaw Go Wifi hotspots, like Telus or Bell do, they hold to their (losing) strategy of making it solely available to Shaw customers.

Shaw has issued guidance that it expects net positive subscriber growth this fiscal year. That would mark a turnaround to many quarters of cord-cutting. However, let's be clear that a driving factor has been Shaw's network-wide rollout of 150 megabit cable service at $50/80 a month. Telus simply can't compete across its network at this stage.

I cannot speak for other cities, but my experience in Edmonton, not including Downtown, which has a lot of City-provided areas, has Shaw Wi-Fi hotspots in a huge number of locations, TELUS in a very small fraction of locations, and I cannot remember the last time I've seen any of the other providers. Of course, retailers (restaurants, stores) offer their own Wi-Fi to customers, but even some of that is giving way to Shaw.

As for the City of Edmonton, they struck a deal with Shaw to have Shaw provide the City's hotspots in City facilities, without the usual need to be a Shaw Internet customer to access it.

As for the war between TELUS and Shaw over 150 Mbps Internet, it is easy to miss the fact that Shaw only offers 15 Mbps upload, while TELUS is 150 Mbps. Which is increasingly more important as services begin to emerge that require that upload speed. Internet-based backup services were the pioneer in this area.

TELUS is moving along quite quickly to get Fibre available across the vast majority of their customer base, which is a requirement for their 150 Mbps Internet service.

From a business perspective, I think Shaw would be stupid to open up all their Wi-Fi hotspots to anyone who is not a Shaw customer. Though it would be a huge mistake to only offer it to Freedom Mobile customers, given the work yet to be done on the network they inherited when they bought Wind.

Personally, I am planing to move from Shaw to TELUS for Internet and traditional home phone service. Some subcontractor illegaly trespassed on my property to install TELUS Fibre right into my basement through the conduit from outside my house two years ago, and I have since received offers indicating that TELUS Fibre-based services are available here. As for my smartphone, my contract ends next month, and TELUS wants me to pay the same price even though I have fully paid for my phone, so I'm going to give Freedom Mobile a try at a savings of $40/month. There is just not enough new in a Samsung Note 8, compared to my Note 4, to make me want to get into a new contract.

jon wrote:I cannot speak for other cities, but my experience in Edmonton, not including Downtown, which has a lot of City-provided areas, has Shaw Wi-Fi hotspots in a huge number of locations, TELUS in a very small fraction of locations, and I cannot remember the last time I've seen any of the other providers. Of course, retailers (restaurants, stores) offer their own Wi-Fi to customers, but even some of that is giving way to Shaw.

As for the City of Edmonton, they struck a deal with Shaw to have Shaw provide the City's hotspots in City facilities, without the usual need to be a Shaw Internet customer to access it.

As for the war between TELUS and Shaw over 150 Mbps Internet, it is easy to miss the fact that Shaw only offers 15 Mbps upload, while TELUS is 150 Mbps. Which is increasingly more important as services begin to emerge that require that upload speed. Internet-based backup services were the pioneer in this area.

TELUS is moving along quite quickly to get Fibre available across the vast majority of their customer base, which is a requirement for their 150 Mbps Internet service.

From a business perspective, I think Shaw would be stupid to open up all their Wi-Fi hotspots to anyone who is not a Shaw customer. Though it would be a huge mistake to only offer it to Freedom Mobile customers, given the work yet to be done on the network they inherited when they bought Wind.

Personally, I am planing to move from Shaw to TELUS for Internet and traditional home phone service. Some subcontractor illegaly trespassed on my property to install TELUS Fibre right into my basement through the conduit from outside my house two years ago, and I have since received offers indicating that TELUS Fibre-based services are available here. As for my smartphone, my contract ends next month, and TELUS wants me to pay the same price even though I have fully paid for my phone, so I'm going to give Freedom Mobile a try at a savings of $40/month. There is just not enough new in a Samsung Note 8, compared to my Note 4, to make me want to get into a new contract.

I normally agree with you on most things, jon, but have to respectfully disagree with yon a few points:

Shaw would not be stupid to open up Shaw Go Wifi to non-customers - they'd just be expanding their municipal partnership under the Shaw Go Wifi Guest Access banner by merging the two and allowing non-customers access to the much larger, proprietary network but with the same limitations (i.e., 250 MB-500 MB per month data cap) as Shaw Go Wifi Guest Access and having to consent to e-mail and/or solicitations for Shaw services. It's about exposing themselves to a broader customer base and also "giving back" to the larger community. If Telus and Bell can do it, and do just fine thank you very much, so can they.

As to that municipal partnership, Shaw promised to install Shaw Go Wifi Guest Access more than three years in the City of West Kelowna at all municipal facilities, key public parks and major transit stops and practically begged the City to let them do this and, to date, nothing.

Also, I don't get how coaxial cable Internet could ever be faster than fibre optic? I thought fibre optic Internet was literally, the "creme de la creme," no?

Also, their whole business strategy is beyond bonkers, in my view. First, they buy up wireless spectrum for a planned public (I should add) rollout of a national Internet wifi network (presumably, attached to power polls or something like that) but then sell the wireless spectrum off but still maintain their Shaw Go Wifi service from partner businesses that are Shaw customers, which they wouldn't need the spectrum for. They continue to insist not needing to be in wireless and justify this by buying ViaWest, a major US data centre operator, which I thought made sense in the same way Telus said they didn't need to buy media assets and smartly bought the former BCE Emergis health care benefits processing business and bundled it together with other health-related assets under the "TELUS Health" business line. Then, they reverse course and buy Wind Mobile and rename it Freedom Mobile and buy more wireless spectrum (or at least register as a bidder for future spectrum) but continue, wrongly in my view, targeting only the major cities - making it impossible for them to build a national network and requiring a lot of roaming for now Freedom Mobile clients. They change CEOs, switching Shaw brothers from Jim to Brad or whatever their names are, and now sell ViaWest. Yes, cable subs have ticked up but I see that as an outlier, a "blip," given how modest it was and I see them returning to market share erosion soon. In between all that, they buy up the former CanWest Global specialty TV and broadcast network TV assets out of bankruptcy and sell it off to Corus (a related entity) at, arguably, grossly inflated values and a major conflict of interest to minority Corus shareholders, especially considering their specialty TV cable channels are in decline and the only real thing of value was the Global TV business.

As to the point about the Telus subcontractor "illegally" trespassing on your property, this isn't my experience - they generally get your permission to do so but, as a utility with underground utility assets, do they not have a right, via right-of-way or easement, to technically dig up any property with only a notification to you provided they restore the vegetation (i.e., grass) to what it was before in the same way that, say, BC Hydro or FortisBC do?

Also, what of their broken promises and major policy reversals of having, for decades, not had contracts and other promo pricing "trickery" and also of their stated corporate mantra having local/regional customer service centres of excellence (i.e., call centres) and blasting their competition for outsourced/centralized or even offshore call centres? Now, they do the same thing, having moved call centre operations out of places like Nanaimo, Kelowna and pretty much every other mid-sized city.